1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a heat transfer recording apparatus for carrying out a recording by heat-transferring a heat transfer material of a carrier onto a recording medium cut in a predetermined size, and more particularly to a heat sensitive transfer recording apparatus and method for a transfer recording in which a plurality of colors are overlapped one on another on a recording medium.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As shown in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,463,360, a prior art heat transfer recording apparatus, more particularly heat transfer color recording apparatus, is constructed so that a carrier, i.e., transfer film and a recording medium, i.e., paper cut in a predetermined size are overlapped together and may be delivered while being pressed between a thermal head and a platen roller. In one delivery operational mode, either the recording paper or transfer film only is delivered. Such a delivery mode is needed for identifying the color of the transfer film or reversely feeding the recording paper.
In principle, this operation may be carried out with the thermal head and the platen roller only by suitably selecting frictional coefficients between the transfer film and the recording paper and between the recording paper and the platen roller. However, as a matter of fact, an additional delivery means is needed since a reliability is degraded due to a static electrocity or a change of the frictional coefficients.
In such a recording method that recording papers cut in a predetermined size are delivered in a forward direction or a reverse direction, and then the overlap recording is carried out, the following difficulties should be taken into consideration in case of the provision of the above-described additional delivery means.
Namely, in case of the delivery of the recording paper in the reverse direction, the delivery force would be insufficient due to the frictional force between the recording paper and the carrier or the load caused by the static electricity, resulting in reduction of overlap precision and causing a paper jam due to a deficiency of the recording paper rigidity. A parallelism between a contact line defined by the additional delivery means and the platen roller and another contact line defined between the thermal head and the platen roller is the most important factor in preventing the recording paper from travelling in an inclined manner, thus requiring a super high accuracy in manufacturing and assembling the apparatus. Furthermore, in the case where an angle defined between the delivery direction of the recording paper and the delivery direction of the transfer film is small, when the recording paper is separated apart from the transfer film after the thermal transfer, there is a fear that the transferred ink would fall or that an separation noise would be made.